The short-sightedness of economizing on the Afghan army is staggering, writes Star columnist Rose DiManno.

A NATO soldier is seen in a field of poppies in Afghanistan. Blight has attacked this year's poppy crop in the country. The Taliban finances its insurrection using the money it makes from opium. (May 27, 2011)

The poppy crop in Afghanistan has suffered virulent blight this year. Because that’s bad news for the Taliban, which funds its insurrection through opium profits, it would seemingly be good news for everyone else, most especially coalition troops and civilians who are killed and wounded in attacks underwritten by harvest yields.

But nothing is ever what it appears in Afghanistan.

Farmers unable to pay back bank loans used to purchase seeds and other agriculture necessities are now facing bankruptcy. They will find some way to blame the West for a consequence of nature. Financial ruin stokes social instability and the country is already facing the flight of donor billions, meaning thousands more jobs lost, as the international community begins cranking down the money spigot — though Afghanistan still receives roughly $15.7 billion in international aid annually. How much of this actually gets to where it’s intended is a matter of speculation.

The Finance Ministry estimated $4.6 billion left Afghanistan last year, through sideways corruption and punishing deals with foreign contractors. Afghans who can afford to leave have been doing so in droves, taking their assets — and often their professional skills — with them. More than 30,000 applied for asylum in industrialized countries last year, according to United Nations figures. Many more simply take their chances.

Clearly they have no faith in their nation’s future. Yet one recent poll found that some 70 per cent of Afghans were “optimistic’’ about what lies ahead for their tortured, war-wracked country. No doubt they will feel less confident about Afghanistan’s prospects following the NATO summit in Chicago last weekend.

The problem is not so much that U.S. President Barack Obama announced an acceleration of troop withdrawal — mostly out by mid-2013 with Afghan forces taking over all security and combat operations — which everybody knew was going to happen, including the Taliban, so helpfully provided with a public exit timetable. Little wonder Taliban leaders, at least those described as “moderate’’ and marginally open to political reconciliation, walked out of not-so-secret negotiations in March over some tiff or other.

Why bother palavering when the combat landscape will change so drastically in just a couple of years with both the U.S. and NATO troops departing?

Negotiations have allegedly resumed but they’re on the Taliban timetable, thus Obama was denied the opportunity to make a big reconciliation announcement in hometown Chicago, as his administration had so fervently hoped.

The real problem, with obviously dire repercussions, is that Washington and other foreign capitals have recalibrated their financial and training commitments to the Afghan security forces they’ll be leaving behind — the army and police they’d have us believe can hold the line against further Taliban incursions when foreign troops are no longer there to protect population centres in southern and eastern Afghanistan or deny fighters easy transit access on the highway to Kabul from Kandahar city. Fighters from Pakistan routinely use that corridor.

The elite first brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division has been deployed to the long-neglected Ghazni province, southwest of the capital — entirely too close to Kabul — to disrupt Taliban operations by fighters who poured into the area after the U.S. military surge of 30,000 extra troops last summer largely rousted them from Kandahar, Zhari, Maiwand and the Panjwaii District previously held to some semblance of order by Canada’s 2,500 troops. But the American paratroopers have only six months to complete their assignment before handing off to Afghan forces.

Of course, the Taliban adjusted to the effective surge by ratcheting up their targeted assassination program of government officials and revered peace commission mediators in the south instead. NATO claims Taliban territorial gains in the south have been reversed and the statistics somewhat bear this out: A sharp decline in attacks in Kandahar city as well as neighbouring Uruzgan and Zabul and a 20 per cent reduction in kinetic enemy activity nationwide.

These hard-waged successes could easily collapse — and likely will — when 130,000 foreign troops (88,000 Americans) bug out by the end of 2014. The U.S. has been spending $10 billion a month on their military mission alone and absorbed about 2,000 deaths. America’s war fatigue 11 years after the Taliban regime was toppled is understandable.

The public has turned on the “good war,” as it did in Canada and Europe, to a large extent because most people think Afghanistan is Kandahar and Helmand, the chaotic south and east where the ethnic Pashtun Taliban has mounted a robust comeback. That’s barely one-quarter of the country.

The rest of the country is relatively stable, modernizing at an astonishing pace, and has zero tolerance for a return to the Taliban yoke. They are Tajiks, Turkoman, Hazaras and Uzbeks who suffered excruciatingly under hardline Islamic Taliban rule. While able to stage occasional dramatic attacks — suicide bombings no difficulty to pull off — the Taliban has no traction beyond their historical base. If another civil war breaks out, they would have to rely (again) on foreign sponsors from Pakistan and Iran primarily.

With the departure of foreign troops, what stands in the Taliban’s way is the army so painstakingly trained and mentored by Americans and the International Security Assistance Force (NATO). Those security forces are now close to reaching the 352,000-size target. Afghan troops are now leading some 40 per cent of combat operations, albeit not yet the more complicated missions.

Yet suddenly the international community paying for this army wants to cut funding corners while simultaneously withdrawing their own troops. The hazards of reducing Afghan security forces to a reported 228,000 from 352,000 by 2017 cannot be underestimated. Many donor countries are clearly reeling from global economic forces that have forced austerity measures on their own citizenry.

Now they intend to fight the Afghan war from a distance and on the cheap, slashing army funding commitments from $6.6 billion to $4.1 billion annually. Washington has been arm-twisting for NATO countries to come up with $1 billion of that but has been offered only 60 per cent of what was requested. (Canada has pledged $110 million a year through 2018 but our trainers will stay no longer than 2014.)

The short-sightedness of economizing on the Afghan army is staggering. Not only would such a huge downsizing further imperil any chance of national security forces holding the Taliban at bay, but the cutbacks could potentially leave more than 100,000 trained fighters without jobs.

Where would they take their skills and their resentment?

The opium crop may be a bust this year but we are in danger of leaving behind fertile ground for the Taliban — and opportunistic allies who may seize upon Afghanistan — to exploit.

The Taliban don’t even need to be smart when the enemy is so damn stupid.